Karis Way

Random thoughts from Eagan, Minn.

Friday, August 29, 2008

A brilliant choice!

If McCain-Palin wins, it's because of a woman on the ticket.

If McCain-Palin loses, it's because of a woman on the ticket.

Pawlenty for President in 2012?

From MinnPost:

By Eric Black | Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

Thinking back on the veepstakes:

If McCain's big decision to put Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the ticket (pretty big surprise, no?) does nothing else, it ends more than two years of Minnesota speculation that our own Gov. Tim Pawlenty would be the pick.

Now that it's over, why didn't John McCain choose Tim Pawlenty as his running mate?

Answer: We don't know, and unless some McCain insider writes a very candid memoir a few years from now, we probably never will know. So, as we prepared to put the buzz of veepstake speculation to rest, I wrote this piece Thursday about the pros and cons of Pawlenty on the ticket. But in doing so, I became convinced that McCain would be a sap to choose the then-presumptive veepstakes frontrunner Mitt Romney or, really, any of the names being bandied by the Great Mentioners, other than our own local boy Pawlenty.

The case for Pawlenty

Pawlenty possesses a large quotient of political talent. He comes across as likeable, winsome, with a good sense of humor, especially self-deprecating humor that communicates humility. He has a regular-guy personality with working-class roots to back it up. Think hockey, and a bit of fishing. Although Pawlenty is very conservative on almost every issue (the most conservative Minnesota governor since the 1920s), something about his personality gives him, however silly this sounds, a more moderate feel.

Pawlenty's humble roots in South St. Paul (son of a truck-driver father and homemaker mother who died when young Tim was 16) must have counted heavily on his behalf, as a potential McCain running mate, because of the contrast with both McCain (who is immensely wealthy as a result of his second marriage) and Romney (sometimes called a billionaire). With the Dem choice of humbly-rooted Joe Biden, just as McCain was mocked for not knowing how many homes he owned, the value of Pawlenty's roots and relatively modest net worth rose.

He has never lost an election. Pawlenty has shown an impressive political sure-footedness (he came up as a campaign official for Sen. Dave Durenberger and 1990 Repub guv candidate Jon Grunseth — yes, that one ended badly). Pawlenty survived even in 2006, a terrible year for Republicans nationally and especially in Minnesota.

He is not gaffe-prone. But when he has gotten into trouble — and there have been several significant instances, for example, in his first race for governor he was assessed the largest fine for an ethical malpractice in Minnesota history — he has demonstrated a rare gift for confessing, taking responsibility, answering all questions and then moving on. He has the gift of coming across as sincere (big advantage over Romney, who has the opposite quality, especially when he had to reinvent himself from moderate to conservative to run for president while explaining away his many sharp turns on key issues).

Pawlenty is young (47), which is considered a good balance for McCain (today is his 72nd birthday). He has an attractive, accomplished, politically experienced wife and two young daughters. The family makes a nice picture. (When an AP camera crew found Pawlenty yesterday to confirm that he would be in Minnesota today when the veep candidate was unveiled, the guv was in the stands watching his daughter's volleyball game. How sweet is that?)

McCain seems to genuinely like Pawlenty. (Huge advantage over Romney. The main story line coming out of some of latter primary season debates was how McCain could not conceal how deeply he detested Romney.) McCain is said to prize loyalty and Pawlenty was an early, ardent and unwavering McCain supporter — even in the darkest days when the candidacy was almost written off. Although Pawlenty has apparently made complimentary remarks about Barack Obama, the media would not have been able to trot out Pawlenty statements made earlier this year disparaging McCain, his positions or his qualifications to be president. (Yes, once again, we're talking about you, Mr. Romney. Not that anyone can blame you. You were running against the guy. But you know how it looks in commercials, like those the Republicans are now making showing Joe Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton talking about Obama.)

Pawlenty might have been able to put Minnesota in play (or so they say, but see the debunking section below), maybe even neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa, some pundits say. (I'm even more skeptical of this one.)

Pawlenty's gubernatorial background (which can also be spun as executive experience) is a balance for McCain's long Senate career.

Pawlenty is an evangelical Baptist. The social issues conservative portion of the Republican base, which doesn't fully trust McCain (although his deviations from their orthodoxy are few and minor), would have felt comfortable. Pawlenty, so far as I know, has never wavered from conservative orthodoxy on the social conservative litmus test issues, and has signed into law restrictions on abortions and a law allowing Minnesotans to carry concealed weapons. Before leaving the paragraph that includes religion, Mitt Romney is a Mormon, in case you hadn't heard. If McCain needs any help with the Mormon vote (Utah is not in play, but Nevada, which has a lot of Mormons, is), this would be a point in Romney's favor. But how many people would be nervous about voting for a Latter Day Saint, and how would it complicate Team McCain's efforts to portray Obama as strange and "otherly"?

Pawlenty is a bona fide and pretty consistent anti-tax fiscal conservative. He first ran for governor in 2002. It's true that he broke the pledge by signing into law an increase in the sales tax on cigarettes, which he tried to claim was not a tax but a fee (a deviation from his general reputation for straight talk). But during his tenure, Minnesota state government spending has shrunk as a percentage of state income.

The debunk

One of the annoying/amusing (depending on the mood you're in) things about this game is that so many of the qualities are two-edged swords. For example:

Pawlenty's youth could have been (and would have been) spun as inexperience. (Although to Minnesotans, it seems like Pawlenty's been around forever. His first election victory was in 1989 (!) to the Eagan City Council.) He's a young governor halfway through his second term. If Team McCain is counting on Obama's relative youth (47) and inexperience (in his fourth year as a freshman senator) as a killer argument, would they have risked undermining it by asking voters to put Pawlenty, a 47-year-old in his sixth year as governor, a heartbeat away from the presidency? (Obviously, Sarah Palin has an even bigger version of this problem, and we'll see how much it hurts the ticket.)

Like most governors, especially those who didn't serve in the military, Pawlenty could have claimed little experience in foreign or military affairs. (Although Pawlenty has been above-average in his determination to travel to Kosovo, Iraq and other garden spots where Minnesota guardsmen and women were deployed, in his capacity as their, shall we say, commander in chief.)

When Joe Biden was first named to the Dem ticket, the great speculators took it as a blow to Pawlenty's chances, based on the surmised fear in Team McCain that the relatively inexperienced Pawlenty would get creamed in a VP debate. I think that's nonsense, but it was definitely the immediate reaction. If Pawlenty is as smart, funny and sure-footed as I wrote above, he would have done fine. His youthful good looks would have provided nice pictures opposite Biden, 65. I'm not saying Biden is homely, not at all. But he's gray and balding. As JFK taught Nixon way back in 1960, the pictures are big. And if Pawlenty and his minions had managed, as per the comments just above, to go into the debate (by the way, it's Oct. 2, mark your calendars) with expectations of getting creamed, he would surely have exceeded expectations, which in debate-speak is almost as good as winning. (OK, so this debunk paragraph kinda turned the other way. Sue me.) This particular concern about Pawlenty, that he wouldn't be prepared to face Biden in a debate, will get a full airing with Palin.

It's true that Pawlenty has never lost an election. And he has maintained a high approval rating (currently 55 percent, according to the recent MPR Humphrey Institute poll). But it's also true that he never got above 50 percent in a statewide race. His 2002 guv win (with 44 percent) and his 2006 reelection (47) were both products of Minnesota's three-party system, and most analysts believe that the Independence Party ticket hurt the DFL in both races. In 2006, Pawlenty seemed doomed to defeat a week before the election and was saved by DFLer Mike Hatch's temper tantrum. A 55 percent approval rating is healthy, especially for a Repub in a blue-leaning state, but other governors have been higher, including Republican Arne Carlson. The point for debunking purposes is that Pawlenty's undefeated record may overstate his popularity.

And while we're on the subject, there is plenty of room for doubt that Pawlenty would have put Minnesota into play. There is no case since 1960 in which a running-mate choice turned any state from blue to red (or vice versa). Minnesota has the nation's longest streak (eight straight) of giving its electoral votes to the Dems. It's true that some of those years have been very close. But the overall climate of the state and the country is trending Democratic this year. The MPR-Humphrey Institute poll I mentioned above found that the current partisan makeup of Minnesotans is Democrat, 50 percent; Republican, 39 percent; independent, 10 percent. I know that some recent polls show the race between Obama and McCain to be close at present. But it will be an upset if Minnesota turns red in the 2008 presidential race, Pawlenty on the ticket or no.

And then there's the weird but intriguing possibility that some Minnesotans, maybe even some Republicans, would have voted against a McCain-Pawlenty ticket to prevent Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau from becoming governor. Molnau is the most unpopular figure on the statewide political scene.

As for the occasional reference, in know-nothing pieces about the veepstakes, that Pawlenty would help the ticket in Wisconsin and Iowa, just ask yourself how likely it is that you (if you are a Minnesotan) would vote for the ticket of a party for which you normally don't vote because it had a governor from Wisconsin or Iowa in the veep slot. Really, these pundits!

In any event, the Palin choice makes clear that Team McCain isn't playing the key swing state game with its veep pick.

Pawlenty's socially conservative positions would have played well with the base. Unlike Romney, he wouldn't have had to answers questions of sudden conversions. But it's not at all clear that these are winning positions with the national electorate. McCain flirted quite late in the veepstakes with former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, both of whom are pro-choice on abortion, and there was plenty of speculation that this could help the ticket with some categories of swing voters.

Likewise fiscal conservatism. The concept of holding taxes down and balancing the budget is very widely popular. Cutting wasteful government is always a good idea. But people also like some of the things that government spending buys, like education, health care and infrastructure. The Dems would surely have found ways to point out that under Gov. Pawlenty, education and infrastructure spending have lagged, Minnesota has declined relative to other states in several measures of excellence and the percentage of working-class Minnesotans without health insurance has risen. For the first time in many decades, the always-above-average Minnesota economy is underperforming the national average by some key measures.

Speaking of infrastructure, there's the collapse of the I-35W bridge. The best efforts of his critics have failed to turn up a logical way to hang direct responsibility for the tragedy on Pawlenty's negligence. But there's no question that infrastructure spending has lagged.

It's another measure of Pawlenty's political skill that his 55 percent approval rating occurs around the anniversary of the bridge collapse. Pawlenty's best qualities, as described above, were in evidence in the days and weeks after the collapse, and somehow it was Molnau whose public image (never so hot) was destroyed. But the rest of the country wasn't paying such close attention to all those shots of Pawlenty looking and sounding good at the scene of the tragedy. If he had been on the ticket, the Dems would have had a second chance, before a national audience, to hang the blame on Pawlenty for that, for the measures of decline that can be traced to Pawlenty's tax and spending priorities, and for — I don't know — taking orders from Dick Cheney about which office he should run for in 2002. Would it have worked? I guess we'll never know.

Eric Black writes about national and state politics, foreign affairs and other topics. He can be reached at eblack@minnpost.com.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Rock Star Barack

Risks of Invesco event worry top Dem

By Charles Mahtesian
Politico
Thu Aug 28, 2008

Senior Democratic officials are expressing serious concerns about the political risks posed by Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High tonight.

From the elaborate stagecraft to the teeming crowd of 80,000 cheering partisans, from the vagaries of the weather to the unpredictable audience reaction, the optics surrounding the stadium event have heightened worries that the Obama campaign is engaging in a high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment.

A common concern: that the stadium appearance plays against Obama's convention goal of lowering his star wattage and connecting with average Americans and gives Republicans a chance to drive home their message that the Democratic nominee is a narcissistic celebrity candidate.

"We already know he is a rock star; we already know he can bring 85,000 people together in a stadium. He has done it multiple times. He needs to talk to people who haven't made up their minds yet," said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.

"It's likely that the campaign would do it differently if it had to do it again because the decision was made before the European trip," said a senior Democratic elected officeholder who has worked closely with the Obama campaign.

The GOP narrative of Obama as celebrity took root during that trip, where the Illinois senator played to large crowds of adoring Europeans.

Obama campaign officials acknowledged the apprehension Wednesday.

"I have heard some of the concerns and criticism that it's such a big venue," said a senior Obama campaign aide. "It's no surprise that people could be a little nervous. We're trying to do something new."

Another senior Obama aide noted Tuesday there were only two options for what the campaign wanted to accomplish — do it either in the convention hall, in front of the delegates, or somewhere else.

"A diner's not an option," the aide said.

The campaign noted that, aside from the speech itself, it's designed to be "a working event" that enables attendees to phone-bank and reach out to potential voters through a variety of online tools. Holding the speech in a venue that holds 80,000 people also allows tens of thousands of Colorado residents to attend and participate — no small consideration since Colorado is a battleground state where Obama and McCain are neck and neck in the polls.

"Winning Colorado is a very important component," said the aide.

But the Invesco Field speech, with its massive expected crowd and the celebrity-style imagery it could evoke, is already being teed up by Republicans eager to hammer home the celebrity theme.

The McCain campaign Wednesday released a memo mockingly titled, "Proper Attire for the Temple of Obama (The Barackopolis)," a reference to the classical stage design in place for his speech. The campaign is already prepared to pull the trigger on ads spun out of the Invesco Field event.

"We'll put it in play against him," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Some Democrats insist the GOP approach will backfire. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said the visuals of tens of thousands of people cheering for Obama can only help his campaign by evoking comparisons to former President Kennedy.

"I think he's in that league," Markey said.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio also sounded a confident note about the political impact of the forum, asserting that it will prove Obama's message has wide resonance.

Bredesen also said that while he has concerns, Obama is a virtuoso performer who cannot be underestimated.

"They have got a great track record so far," he said. "I would love to see him out showing a certain kind of humility, being in touch with people who go to breakfast at the Waffle House, sending a message."

Martin Kady II, Daniel W. Reilly and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 Denver Post.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A Monumental Moment

History in the making, first black nominee

By JESSE J. HOLLAND and CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press Writers

When this campaign ends, after future presidents have come and gone, and when today's young people are grown old, history will remember Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, as the day a black man became the presidential nominee of a major party.

This is history with the ink still wet; transcendent, yet in your face now.

It's a history that belongs to the red states and the blue states and the United States, to borrow the phrase that made people first sit up and listen to Barack Obama only four years ago.

Americans who don't like him, who will never vote for him, own it, too.

The roll call of states Wednesday night at the Democratic convention means Denver joins Springfield, Ill., and Washington, D.C. in an arc that spans centuries which saw slavery, emancipation, lynchings, Jim Crow, lunch counter bigotry, voting rights, integration, oratory, intermarriage, black pride, assassination, riots, marches — so many marches — and now a nomination.

The arc traces Abraham Lincoln's legacy of freeing the slaves to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago Thursday, to the convention center in Denver.

And on next to Invesco Field, where Obama will speak on the anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech.

"This is a monumental moment in our nation's history," Martin Luther King III, the civil rights icon's oldest son, told AP on Wednesday. "And it becomes obviously an even greater moment in November if he's elected."

Democrats have danced around race for much of their convention, to a point where the marker that will enter the history books is almost obscured. It's all about making whites comfortable voting for him. Democrats worry about a backlash.

Obama's racial milestone was on everyone's minds but few lips as speaker after speaker stood to emphasize that he is a regular guy.

Yet all knew, win or lose in the fall, something for the ages was unfolding. "This man is on a mission," said Florida delegate Cynthia Moore Chestnut of Gainesville.

That's a lot riding on someone who has fought no wars, led no mass protests, served two-thirds of a term in the Senate, and missed the height of the civil rights movement because he was too young.

Until now, Obama's promise has outpaced his achievements and, at times, he has sounded like a man carried along on a wave that came out of the blue.

"When I actually do something," he joked not so long ago, "we'll let you know."

Two movements — for blacks and women — converged in this campaign as Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton went head to head. Both movements got farther than ever before, but only one could carry the day.

The roll call ended her historic campaign to become the first female nominee of a major party and hard feelings linger.

Civil rights and women's rights are not in a horse race. But over two centuries it has felt like one, as if there were only so much equality to go around at any given moment.

Women and blacks have worked together at times, apart at other times and against each other on occasion, as their advancements leapfrogged.

Blacks got the right to vote, then women did. But then blacks wrestled for decades to secure the right to vote without impediments that amounted to disenfranchisement.

Paradoxically (does history ever unfold in a neat progression?), Obama is less a product of the civil rights movement than most of his black country men and women. He is not a descendent of slaves. He is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas.

Obama inevitably stands on many shoulders as beneficiary of the evolution of black political power in the United States.

There are the shoulders of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose many accomplishments include this milestone: At the Republican convention in 1888, he received one vote in the presidential roll call, the first black man to get a vote for a major party nomination.

There are the shoulders of Jesse Jackson, a century later the first black contender to sway the race for president.

And the shoulders of ordinary voters across racial lines, like Kate Clark, 53, a white cafe owner in Nazareth, Pa., who said: "I think we need to see the United States and see the world through eyes that are younger, through eyes that have dreams, through eyes that see something new for the nation."

And Edwin David, who served with the famed World War II unit of black fighters known as the Tuskegee Airmen and, at age 83, and retired in the Pocono Mountains, pleaded: "Just let me live 'til voting time in November. In my lifetime, we just might get to see the first African-American president."

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Alleged assassins arrested

Nazi link in 'plot to assassinate Obama'

Published in The Scotsman, Edinburgh

Date: 27 August 2008

By CHRIS STEPHEN

IN DENVER

THE three men arrested over a reported plot to kill the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, have ties to the white supremacist group Aryan Nations, police said last night.

Shawn Robert Adolf, 33, Nathan Johnson, 32, and Tharin Gartrell, 28, are all said to have links to the group.

Adolf – his real name according to police – and the others were arrested on weapons charges after an apparent move to assassinate Mr. Obama during his party's convention in Denver this week.

All three belong to Aryan Nations, according to Victor Ross, the police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver where one of the suspects was arrested. The other two were held in Aurora, another suburb.

"We don't usually have that number of Aryan Nations people here," Mr. Ross said. "It was suspicious to us. We turned everything over to the federal authorities."

It is said the group planned to shoot Mr. Obama during his convention acceptance speech, to be delivered outdoors at a football stadium tomorrow night – the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" address. While federal agents are downplaying the plot as being of "no credible threat" to Mr. Obama, the discovery of such a plan – and the way it was discovered – are certain to raise security concerns over the man who could be the next president of the United States.

Events started to move in the early hours of Sunday, the day before the Democratic National Convention was due to open, when a police patrol car stopped a pick-up truck driving erratically in Aurora.

In the back of the vehicle, officers found two high-powered rifles, one with telescopic sights, a spotting scope, a flak jacket, camouflage clothing, a bulletproof vest, boxes of ammunition, three fake identity cards, two wigs, two walkie-talkies and a quantity of the drug methamphetamine, a form of speed known as crystal meth.

The driver, Gartrell, unemployed, was arrested.

Four hours later, police raided a nearby hotel where alleged accomplice Adolf, a wanted fugitive, was staying. He tried to escape by jumping from a sixth-floor window, breaking his ankle in the attempt.

He has a long history of convictions for drugs and violence, and when arrested, police found he had the key to handcuffs in one hand and a ring with a swastika emblem in the other.

Shortly afterwards, police made two more arrests, of Johnson and his girlfriend, Natasha Gromek, both on drugs charges, at another hotel.

In an extraordinary interview from his jail cell, Johnson told a reporter from CBS television that Adolf had planned to kill Mr. Obama during his nomination acceptance address to 75,000 supporters at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High football stadium tomorrow night.

"He (Adolf] said at one point, yes, it would be on probably the day of his acceptance speech," Johnson said. He had told FBI investigators "it would be from a high vantage point with the named rifle". But Johnson insisted he himself had no part in the plot.

He said Adolf had said of Mr. Obama: "He don't belong in political office; blacks don't belong in political office. He should be shot."

When asked if he felt there was a plot to kill Mr. Obama, Johnson said: "Looking back at it, I don't want to say yes, but I don't want to say no."

Aryan Nations is the most influential of dozens of neo-Nazi groups spread across the U.S. Last year, one of its members, Jason Hamilton, went on a shooting spree that left three people and himself dead in Idaho, home to one of the group's three branches. Hamilton was a member of The Order, a self-styled commando group within Aryan Nations.

The group's website is blunt about its role in creating a whites-only state in North America. "We realise that it takes a cold-blooded, pragmatic and realist viewpoint to enact the changes which will be necessary to achieve our goals," it says.

But the U.S. authorities are playing down the ability of the arrested men to carry out an assassination amid tight security. "We're absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention or the people of Colorado," Troy Eid, the state attorney, said.

Opinion is divided about whether groups such as Aryan Nations represent a genuine threat or can be dismissed as cranks, but the U.S. has a long and unhappy history of cranks with guns. The 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy was the work of a disgruntled loner, Lee Harvey Oswald, and in 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier, aided by two accomplices, built a bomb and detonated it outside a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168.

Prosecutors yesterday said they had evidence to charge the three men only with drugs and firearms offences.

Security fears have been heightened by Mr. Obama's decision to hold his acceptance speech not in the convention centre in Denver, but in the open-roofed football stadium, a much harder venue to police.

The evidence suggests a well-planned assassination attempt, with weapons assembled, a truck rented and hotel rooms booked in a town where most accommodation was full months before the convention.

But police sources doubt such an attempt could have been carried out. Metal detectors will search all those entering the stadium; the nearest rooftops are 750 yards from the ground and will be monitored by police snipers; helicopters will guard a no-fly zone over the stadium, and even a McVeigh-style truck bomb would be kept away by a large cordon around the area.

Nevertheless, the arrests have touched a raw nerve.

Thursday's nomination acceptance takes place on the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech by Martin Luther King, and King's campaign for racial equality saw him assassinated 40 years ago.

And while Democrats of all races are euphoric about the Obama campaign, that is countered by some resentment.

As a result, security is tight, verging on paranoid, across the city. On Sunday, a full security alert was triggered and a hotel evacuated – those that had to leave included House speaker Nancy Pelosi – after a man checked-in with two hunting rifles he had brought to Denver for repair.

On the main highway leading to the airport, police patrols have begun stopping vans and minibuses, apparently after fears about home-made bombs.

Meanwhile, a large part of downtown Denver has been closed off, with high metal gates and concrete barriers to thwart bombing attempts. Inside this zone, police vehicles cruise the streets with armed officers in black jumpsuits clinging to the sides.

Since Sunday, Denver police have been hunting through derelict and public buildings for weapons, flags and petrol bombs that they fear rioters may have stockpiled, intending to use during demonstrations planned for later this week.

The media are also under pressure from the Democratic establishment, which wants reporting to concentrate on their scripted conference and not be diverted into covering an alleged assassination conspiracy.

A target of hatred from the outset

The men and women of the Secret Service, dressed in dark suits, wearing sunglasses and carrying SIG Sauer P229 automatic handguns, arrived at Senator Barack Obama's side at exactly 1 p.m. on 3 May, 2007. And they don't look likely to leave anytime soon.

Mr. Obama was given official protection under Public Law 90-331, introduced after the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, which authorises the protection of major presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Usually the armed protection begins 120 days prior to the election; however, Mr. Obama was given early and elevated security because, as Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator, explained: "Mr. Obama's African-American heritage is a cause for very violent and hated reactions among some people."

While Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, is understood to have just eight full-time Secret Service agents in his detail, Mr. Obama is thought to have dozens more. All are trained in the use of a variety of close-combat weapons, such as the Remington Model 870 shotgun, the IMI Uzi and the HK MP5 (including the MP5KA4) submachine-guns among others. Each is issued with a radio to maintain communication with a central command post and other personnel. Basic strategies include: shield the protectee from any threat; evacuate the protectee to a safe location; conduct extensive research in order to plan for all contingencies.

Protection goes beyond surrounding the candidate with well-armed agents. The Secret Service website states that the agency does extensive advance work and threat assessments.

It has been reported that the Secret Service's codename for Mr. Obama is "Renegade". The Senator has a relaxed, good-natured relationship with the men charged with taking a bullet for him.

While Mr. Obama's team insist the candidate has "the best protection in the world", there have been allegations that the vast numbers flocking to hear the senator speak are forcing the Secret Service to cut corners. It was reported that, at a rally in Dallas, agents ordered local police to stop searching each supporter before entering the arena.

A History of Violence

JOHN HINCKLEY

AGE: 53 (25 at time)

TARGET: President Ronald Reagan

DATE: 30 March, 1981

WHAT HAPPENED: Hinckley developed an obsession with the actress Jodie Foster. He tried repeatedly to contact her, then developed the belief that if he assassinated the president he would be famous and so her equal. On 30 March, 1981, Hinckley fired a revolver at Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Hinckley wounded three people, and although he did not directly hit Reagan, the president was hurt when a bullet ricocheted off his limousine and hit him in the chest. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been remanded under institutional psychiatric care ever since.

SIRHAN SIRHAN

AGE: 64 (24 at time)

TARGET: Presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy

DATE: 4 June, 1968

WHAT HAPPENED: The assassination of Bobby Kennedy as he was campaigning to win the Democratic presidential nomination led directly to Congress providing Secret Service protection to candidates.

Kennedy was shot in the head with a 0.22-calibre revolver in the kitchen passageway of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian angered by Kennedy's support of Israel during the Six-Day War. Kennedy was rushed to hospital, where he died. Sirhan remains incarcerated at the California State Prison, Corcoran.

LEE HARVEY OSWALD

AGE: 34 (killed same year)

TARGET: President John F Kennedy

DATE: 22 November, 1963

WHAT HAPPENED: President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, after being shot twice in the neck and head as he and his wife drove through the city in a open-top motorcade. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder, but denied the crime, claiming to be "a patsy". He was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby two days later. President Johnson created the Warren Commission – chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren – to investigate the assassination and concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, a view that, despite the vast number of conspiracy theories, has hardened over the years into certainty.

JAMES EARL RAY

AGE: 40 (died in 1998)

TARGET: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King

DATE: 4 April, 1968

WHAT HAPPENED: The Rev. Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, in whose room 306 he regularly stayed. The bullet, fired by James Earl Ray, passed down his spinal cord and lodged in his shoulder. According to Jesse Jackson, King's last words were to musician Ben Branch: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." King was pronounced dead at St Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 pm. Ray was sentenced to 99 years and died in prison.


The article appeared in The Scotsman newspaper.

Last Updated: 26 August 2008 11:37 PM
Source: The Scotsman
Location: Edinburgh

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Obama lacks confidence

Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence

By RON FOURNIER,
Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 23, 2008

DENVER – The candidate of change went with the status quo.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

He picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate — the ultimate insider — rather than a candidate from outside Washington, such as Govs. Tim Kaine of Virginia or Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas; or from outside his party, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; or from outside the mostly white male club of vice presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't even make his short list.

The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden pick is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

Democratic strategists, fretting over polls that showed McCain erasing Obama's lead this summer, welcomed the move. They, too, worried that Obama needed a more conventional — read: tougher — approach to McCain.

"You've got to hand it to the candidate and the campaign. They have a great sense of timing and tone and appropriateness. Six months ago, people said he wasn't tough enough on Hillary Clinton — he was being too passive — but he got it right at the right time," said Democratic strategist Jim Jordan. "He'll get it right again."

Indeed, Obama has begun to aggressively counter McCain's criticism with negative television ads and sharp retorts from the campaign trail.

A senior Obama adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his boss has expressed impatience with what he calls a "reverence" inside his campaign for his message of change and new politics. In other words, Obama is willing — even eager — to risk what got him this far if it gets him to the White House.

Biden brings a lot to the table. An expert on national security, the Delaware senator voted in 2002 to authorize military intervention in Iraq but has since become a vocal critic of the conflict. He won praise for a plan for peace in Iraq that would divide the country along ethnic lines.

Chief sponsor of a sweeping anti-crime bill that passed in 1994, Biden could help inoculate Obama from GOP criticism that he's soft on crime — a charge his campaign fears will drive a wedge between white voters and the first black candidate with a serious shot at the White House.

So the question is whether Biden's depth counters Obama's inexperience — or highlights it?

After all, Biden is anything but a change agent, having been in office longer than half of all Americans have been alive. Longer than McCain.

And he talks too much.

On the same day he announced his second bid for the presidency, Biden found himself explaining why he had described Obama as "clean."

And there's the 2007 ABC interview in which Biden said he would stand by an earlier statement that Obama was not ready to serve as president.

It seems Obama is worried that some voters are starting to agree.

____

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ron Fournier has covered national politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Earthquake dangers for NYC

Study finds new earthquake dangers for New York City

Sat Aug 23, 2008

An analysis of recent earthquake activity around New York City has found that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake.

The study also found that a line of seismic activity comes within 2 miles of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, about 25 miles north of New York City. Another fault line near the plant was already known, so the findings suggest Indian Point is at an intersection of faults.

The study's authors, who work at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory, acknowledge that the biggest earthquakes — in the 6 or 7 magnitude range — are rare in the New York City region. They say a quake of magnitude 7 probably comes about every 3,400 years.

But they note that no one knows when the last one hit, and because of the population density and the concentration of buildings and financial assets, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk.

The metropolitan area does not have a single great fault like the San Andreas fault in California, said Leonardo Seeber, co-author of the study.

"Instead of having a single major fault or a few major faults, we tend to have a lot of very minor and sort of subtle faults," he said. "It's a family of faults, and that can contribute to the severity of an earthquake."

John Ebel, director of seismology at Boston College's Weston Observatory, said he agreed with the study's finding that small faults can contribute to large earthquakes. "A quake can jump from one fault to another," he said.

The study, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, analyzed 383 known earthquakes over the past 330 years in or near New York City. The biggest were three that reached magnitude 5 in 1737, 1783 and 1884.

Data on earthquakes since the early 1970s, when Lamont deployed dozens of new detectors, enabled the authors to see patterns from smaller quakes, including the magnitude 4.1 quake that was centered on Ardsley, in Westchester County, in 1985.

The report inferred from the data that a seismic zone, previously undetected, runs west from the southwest tip of Connecticut and intersects with the large, well-known Ramapo fault near Indian Point.

Lynn Sykes, the lead author, said the finding means the danger of a big quake near the nuclear plants is greater that had been thought.

Sykes acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that he is opposed to an application from Entergy Nuclear, which owns the nuclear plant, to extend the licenses of the two reactors, but he said, "I try to keep that as independent from my work as possible."

Columbia spokesman Kevin Krajick said the study had been provided before publication to state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who argued unsuccessfully earlier this year that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should consider the new earthquake data as it decides whether to extend the licenses.

Ebel said the report's suggestion of a fault line was "a purely circumstantial, speculative argument, but while it's speculative it's within the scientific bounds of reason." He praised the study and urged other scientists to build on it.

Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said the plant was designed to withstand a seismic event. He said that even if the frequency and intensity of earthquakes is greater than was believed when the plant was built, it wouldn't drastically change the outlook for plant safety.

He said the plant "may very well be among the safest places to go during a seismic event."

___

On the Net:

Seismological Society of America, http://www.seismosoc.org/

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Biden Can Continue Senate Campaign

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., can continue his bid for re-election this year even though he has been chosen as the Democratic vice presidential running mate.

Delaware state law says that Biden may run for both offices at the same time – a la Lieberman in 2000, Bentsen in 1988 and, the most famous one, LBJ in 1960.

If the Democrats win in November, the governors of Biden's Delaware and Sen. Barack Obama’s Illinois may name whomever they want to succeed the departing senators.

As an interesting sidenote, Governors Ruth Ann Minner of Delaware and Rod Blagojevich of Illinois are both Democrats.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

China cheats?

Thursday, Aug 21, 2008

IOC orders investigation into He Kexin's age

By Chris Chase

The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into the age of Chinese gymnast He Kexin, The Times of London reports. Faced with almost insurmountable evidence that suggests He is two years younger than the birth date listed on her Chinese passport, the IOC has launched an inquiry that could result in the stripping of He's gold medals.

This news comes on the heels of another Times report that details the findings of a New York computer security expert who found official Chinese documents that list He's age as 14 years and 220 days. Mike Walker used a Chinese search engine's cache feature to find He's actual date of birth on spreadsheets from a Chinese government website. The spreadsheets were taken down off the site recently and He's name had been removed.

Assuming the IOC is committed to a real investigation and not some dog and pony show, the revelation that the Chinese government covered up the ages of gymnasts could end up being the defining moment of these Olympic Games for the host country. Officials wanted the Olympics to be a coming out party for a new China. While the Games have been a huge success, there is a legitimate possibility that China's legacy from Beijing '08 will be that of a massive government cover-up, not the magical Opening Ceremony or the transformation of Beijing or anything else positive.

All the good work China did to put on these Olympics could be forgotten because of an unnecessary, arrogant move by the government. Why risk everything to put a 14-year old in the competition when they could have replaced her with an of-age 16-year old gymnast? Sure, He is a better gymnast than the Chinese gymnasts who were eligible to compete, but with the judges they had at the Olympics, would it really have mattered?

It pays to have a wealthy trophy wife

McCain unsure how many houses he owns

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

In recent weeks, Democrats have stepped up their effort to caricature McCain as living an outlandishly rich lifestyle — a bit of payback to the GOP for portraying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as an elitist, and for turning the spotlight in 2004 on the five homes owned by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Pro-Obama labor groups have sent out mailers highlighting McCain’s wealth, and prominent Democrats have included references to it in comments to reporters.

Twice in the past two weeks, those Democrats have focused on McCain’s houses.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Politico’s Ben Smith that it was McCain “who wears $500 shoes, has six houses and comes from one of the richest families in his state."

And David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, referred in an interview with Adam Nagourney of The New York Times to an imagined meeting of McCain strategists “on the portico of the McCain estate in Sedona — or maybe in one of his six other houses.”

McCain’s comments came four days after he initially told Pastor Rick Warren during a faith forum on Sunday that his threshold for considering someone rich is $5 million —a careless comment he quickly corrected.

In the interview, McCain did not offer an alternate number but had a new answer ready.

“I define rich in other ways besides income,” he said. “Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they’re billionaires.”

McCain, by anyone's measure, is well-off, if you account for his wife's fortune. Cindy McCain inherited control of her father’s beer distributorship, the largest in Arizona, and has an estimated worth of more than $100 million.

Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC.

Pizzle. Pizzle. China thanks Scotland

Scots deer are giving up prize assets to aid China's Olympians

Published Date: 21 August 2008 in The Scotsman (Edinburgh)

By SHÂN ROSS

From deep within the glens, Scotland's gamekeepers are supplying a secret ingredient that may explain why China's athletes have surged to the top of the Olympics gold-medal table.

Gamekeepers revealed today for the first time that they are exporting a secret weapon to China – the "pizzle" from Scottish deer.

Athletes use the male animal's sexual organ to boost stamina and for its alleged anti-inflammatory, immune stimulant and injury-healing properties.

Deputations of Chinese pizzle traders have been visiting the Highlands to view the deer, regarded as the most virile in the world, and have been training Scottish game dealers on how to process the parts for export.

The deer is a symbol of health and longevity in Oriental medicine, with the first mention of their by-products noted more than 2,000 years ago.

Alastair Lyon, 42, head keeper on the Ralia and Milton Estate, confirmed the trade was part of the gamekeeping world. He said: "Stalkers sell off all the bits and the game dealer takes the carcase."

More than 100,000 deer out of an estimated 750,000 in Scotland are culled each year to prevent the herd and other animals starving to death.

Christian Nissen, managing director of Highland Game, venison and game dealers in Dundee, whose company received training from the Chinese, said: "The meetings with the Chinese have been one of the most interesting negotiations I have ever had.

"Every processor has the responsibility to attempt to sell as much of the carcase as possible.

"The pizzles are creating an extra income for the estate, just like the meat."

The pizzles, which are frozen or dried before export, are rich in protein, vitamins, calcium, magnesium and hormones and low in cholesterol.

Pizzles can be consumed in various ways – defrosted and eaten; mixed with alcohol, which is then drunk; served in soup; or dried and made into capsules or a paste.

One of the many Chinese athletes who use old-style remedies is Yao Ming, the star basketball player who said in April he would use traditional medicine to aid his recovery from ankle surgery. He said: "There is no reason to dismiss it. It's been used in our country for thousands of years."

Katrina Candy, head of media and education at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust in Scotland, said: "This is another example of how sought after Scottish game is and how every part of the beast is useful and nothing goes to waste."

Finlay Clark, secretary of the Association of Deer Management Groups, an independent body representing those who manage Scotland's deer populations, said: "I have never tried it, but if there are any Scots athletes who want to give it a go, I'm sure we could arrange it. However, I'm sure our gold medals have been won by sheer dedication and hard work."

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Beijing Tragedy

Behind the Opening Ceremony, a Paralyzing Fall

By DAVID BARBOZA

BEIJING — A talented, 26-year-old Chinese dancer was seriously injured during a rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic games just 12 days before the show, and faces the prospect of being paralyzed for the rest of her life.

Liu Yan, considered one of the country’s top classical Chinese dancers, was preparing the performance of a lifetime: the only solo dance in a four-hour spectacular that was expected to be seen by a global audience of more than 1 billion people.

But on July 27, during an evening rehearsal at Beijing’s National Stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest, she leaped toward a platform that malfunctioned and plunged about 10 feet into a shaft, landing on her back, according to family members.

She was rushed to a local military hospital and underwent six hours of surgery but suffers from nerve and spinal damage.

Her head was not badly injured, and she can move her arms. But she has no feeling below her chest, she said in a hospital bed interview. She cannot move her lower body, including her legs.

Doctors have told her family it is unlikely she will ever walk again.

During an interview in her hospital room, Liu was teary-eyed and said she was in disbelief about the accident.

“I never imagined I could suffer such a tragedy,” she said.

The organizers of the opening ceremony initially asked witnesses and friends not to disclose the accident ahead of the Olympic Games on Aug. 8, according to people who have visited Liu in the hospital.

But after inquiries from several newspapers, members of the Beijing Olympic Committee visited Liu and announced that they would hold a news conference.

For the most part, the Chinese state-run news media have not reported the accident, although People's Daily, the Communist Party’s official organ, mentioned it in a small article.

Zhang Yimou, the show’s artistic director and one of the country’s leading film directors, expressed deep sadness following a visit with Liu.

“I feel sorry for Liu Yan, my heart is full of regrets,” he said in an interview. “I’m deeply sorry. Liu Yan is a heroine. She sacrificed a lot for the Olympics, for me, for the opening ceremony.”

In an earlier interview with the Chinese media, after his artistic direction of the opening ceremony won high praise from around the world, Zhang said he was pleased with the show but added that there were some serious problems in rehearsals for a show that involved more than 15,000 performers.

“I regret many things, many details of this performance, many things I could have done better,” he said. “For example, there are performers who were injured. I blame myself for that. It might well have been avoided if I had given more detailed instructions.”

Following the accident, Liu’s parents flew to Beijing from their home in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. Her husband and friends were seeking a specialist to help determine whether she can regain her ability to walk.

Liu, a graduate of the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy, was widely considered one of the country’s leading classical dancers. Dance experts have called her movements incredibly fluid, and said that her beauty radiates on the stage. Over the years, some of her performances have also been popular on YouTube.

She has won most of the nation’s top dance and drama awards, including the Lotus Cup.

She also performed last year at the country’s New Year’s Eve Gala, which is televised nationally every year and draws some of the country’s most famous singers, dancers and actors.

Liu, who recently married, is the only child of a judge and a doctor and grew up in northern China. She entered the middle school of the Beijing Dance Academy at age 11.

Her planned performance in the opening ceremony, The Silk Road, was the only solo dance in a show that was rich in traditional imagery and synchronized performances. Another dancer took her place.

Liu said it was a dream that she could be chosen for such a role. Now she is hoping for a miracle so that she might some day walk again.

“I hope one day I can just stand up like a normal person,” she said wiping away tears.

Chen Yang contributed research.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Huge grotto found under Norwegian glacier

Large quantities of water from melting ice have created what researchers are calling a "sensational" grotto under one of Norway's major glaciers.

The researchers discovered the grotto under the Nigard Glacier, an arm of the famed Jostedal Glacier in Luster, in the western county of Sogn og Fjordane.

Experts have been worrying about the melting of Norway's glaciers for years. Now they've found what some call an "exclusive" side-effect of the melting activity.

"The glacier is changing all the time, and we have found grottos earlier, but I have never seen anything as large as the grotto we have discovered now," according to glacier expert Bjørnar Bjørhusdal.

Peder Kjærvik, leader of the information center for Jostedalsbreen Nasjonalpark (Breheimsenteret), said an earlier grotto was found in the 1970s, but this one is much bigger.

Bjørhusdal and another local expert who conducts guided expeditions over the glacier found what they're calling an "ice cathedral." They were out checking changes in the glacier when they spotted a "port" between the ground and the ice.

Its opening is about five meters high and inside is the grotto, which he said measures about eight meters high, 20-30 meters deep and about 20 meters wide.

He described the ice grotto as "fantastic," with "extremely blue" colors and large icicles hanging from its ceiling. "But it's changing from day to day," he said, noting that ice is a "moving phenomenon."

The grotto is believed to have been created by rising temperatures. "It's the running water under the ice that has made the ice over it melt," Kjærvik said.

Glacier researcher Atle Nesje said the creation of such large ice grottos can be tied to a steadily warmer climate. Melting ice digs tunnels that are then expanded by warm air streams.

Both Nesje and Bjørhusdal warned the public against entering such grottos on their own, because they can be dangerous, especially in the summer.

"They can be life-threatening, because the entire grotto can collapse," Nesje said.

Aftenposten's reporter
Kjetil Olsen

This is an article from www.aftenposten.no.

It can be found at this address: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2204644.ece

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Another mystery solved

The mystery of the black stuff on Kerri Walsh's shoulder

By Chris Chase

What is that black stuff is on Kerri Walsh's shoulder?

If you've watched any beach volleyball so far during the Olympics, you've surely noticed it. Spread across American star Walsh's right shoulder is a distinct black marking that sort of looks like a cross between a tribal tattoo and a Rorschach test. So what is it?

As is usually the case in instances like this, the most mundane explanation is the correct one. The black markings on Walsh's shoulder are a sort of medical tape. Specifically, it's called kinesio tape, a special elastic material designed to support muscles while offering an unimpeded range of motion. Walsh had shoulder surgery last fall to remove bone chips, bone spurs and scar tissue that had built up over a lifetime of setting and spiking. The tape, and taping method, help stabilize the shoulder during the match and aids in circulation.

Mystery of the showering divers

At the Bejing Olympics, after completing a dive, competitors swim to a ladder, climb out of the pool and head immediately to a bank of showers adjacent to the diving boards. Then, in full view of the crowd and NBC cameras, they shower off. Divers keep their suits on, of course, usually appearing only to rinse off their hair and arms. Oftentimes, the divers will receive their scores while still showering off. What's the purpose of this?

Theories have ranged from to get the chlorine off to "they want to have fun," a direct quote from NBC's diving analyst, Cynthia Potter. Neither is the reason.

Divers shower in between each dive to keep their muscles warm after getting out of the pool. The temperatures of the pool water and the air are usually different. The pool is usually around 80 degrees, with the air temperature between 68 and 72 degrees. This difference can cause muscle tightness. To combat this, divers warm up in either the showers or a hot tub.

Mystery solved. But why are the showers are out in the open? The water cube cost more than $200 million to build. Couldn't a privacy wall have been put in?

Venomous lionfish

Venomous lionfish prowl fragile Caribbean waters

Wed Aug 13, 2008 - 11:18 PM EDT

A maroon-striped marauder with venomous spikes is rapidly multiplying in the Caribbean's warm waters, swallowing native species, stinging divers and generally wreaking havoc on an ecologically delicate region.

The red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific Oceans that probably escaped from a Florida fish tank, is showing up everywhere — from the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola to Little Cayman's pristine Bloody Bay Wall, one of the region's prime destinations for divers.

Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.

Research teams observed one lionfish eating 20 small fish in fewer than 30 minutes.

"This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history," said Mark Hixon, an Oregon State University marine ecology expert, who compared lionfish to a plague of locusts. "There is probably no way to stop the invasion completely."

A white creature with maroon stripes, the red lionfish has the face of an alien and the ribbony look of something that survived a paper shredder — with poisonous spikes along its spine to ward off enemies.

The invasion is similar to that of other aquarium escapees such as walking catfish and caulerpa, a fast-growing form of algae known as "killer seaweed" for its ability to crowd out native plants. The catfish are now common in South Florida, where they threaten smaller fish in wetlands and fish farms.

In Africa, the Nile Perch rendered more than 200 fish species extinct when it was introduced into Lake Victoria. The World Conservation Union calls it one of the 100 worst alien species invasions.

"Those kinds of things happen repeatedly in fresh water," Hixon said. "But we've not seen such a large predatory invasion in the ocean before."

The lionfish so far has been concentrated in the Bahamas, where marine biologists are seeing it in every habitat: in shallow and deep reefs, off piers and beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, in mangrove thickets that are vital habitats for baby fish.

Some spots in the Bahamian archipelago between New Providence and the Berry Islands are reporting a tenfold increase in lionfish just during the last year.

Northern Caribbean islands have sounded the alarm, encouraging fishermen to capture lionfish and divers to report them for eradication.

The invasion would be "devastating" to fisheries and recreational diving if it reached Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to Eugenio Pineiro-Soler of the Caribbean Fishery Management Council.

"I think at the best they will have a huge impact on reef fish, and at the worst will result in the disappearance of most reef fish," said Bruce Purdy, a veteran dive operator who has helped the marine conservation group REEF with expeditions tracking the invasion.

Purdy said he has been stung several times while rounding up lionfish — once badly.

"It was so painful, it made me want to cut my own hand off," he said.

Researchers believe lionfish were introduced into the Atlantic in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew shattered a private aquarium and six of them spilled into Miami's Biscayne Bay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Biologists think the fish released floating sacs of eggs that rode the Gulf Stream north along the U.S. coast, leading to colonization of deep reefs off North Carolina and Bermuda. Lionfish have even been spotted as far north as Rhode Island in summer months, NOAA said.

They are not aggressive toward humans, and their sting is not fatal. There are no estimates so far of tourists who have been stung. But marine officials say swimmers will be more at risk as the venomous species overtakes tropical waters along popular Caribbean beaches.

The slow-moving fish, which measures about 18 inches, is easy to snare, though lionfish swim too deep for divers to catch in nets — a common method of dealing with invasive species.

So researchers are scrambling to figure out what will eat the menacing beauties in their new Caribbean home, experimenting with predators such as sharks, moray eels — and even humans.

Adventurous eaters describe the taste of lionfish fillets as resembling halibut. But so far, they are a tough sell. Hungry sharks typically veer abruptly when researchers try to hand-feed them a lionfish.

"We have gotten sharks to successfully eat a lionfish, but it has been a lot of work. Most of our attempts with the moray eel have been unsuccessful," said Andy Dehart of the National Aquarium in Washington, who is working with REEF in the Bahamas.

One predator that will eat lionfish is grouper, which are rare in the lionfish's natural Southeast-Asian habitat. Scientists are pinning long-range hopes on the establishment of new ocean reserves to protect grouper and other lionfish predators from overfishing.

Hixon said there is some evidence that lionfish have not invaded reefs of the fully protected Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, a 176-square-mile reserve southeast of Nassau. But unprotected locations in the vast archipelago are more vulnerable.

Containing the spread of the lionfish is an uphill fight. As lionfish colonize more territory in the Caribbean, they feed on grazing fish that keep seaweed from overwhelming coral reefs already buffeted by climate change, pollution and other environmental pressures.

Dehart said: "If we start losing these smaller reef fish as food to the lionfish ... we could be in a whirlwind for bad things coming to the reef ecosystem."

___

Associated Press Television News reporter Tracy Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Shameful!

Most companies in US avoid federal income taxes

By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices -- amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.

Online Blunders

7 Online Blunders That Threaten Your Identity

From Consumer Reports

These common mistakes can ruin your computer or invite identity theft:

1. Assuming Your Security Software Is Protecting You

Security software is fully effective only when activated and frequently updated. (Most products can update automatically.) To update most commercial software products, you must pay an annual fee. Last fall, the National Cyber Security Alliance and the software maker McAfee found that nearly half the users polled who thought their software was protecting them hadn't updated it regularly. Software bundled with a new computer requires special attention because its subscription may expire within weeks.

What you can do: Renew the subscription when the software prompts you. Make sure your security software is active when you're online and that it has been updated within the past week or so. (Most products will display that information.) If it wasn't updated recently, verify that its automatic updating feature is enabled. If it isn't, that's the problem; enable it, then update manually. If you can't, your subscription has probably expired. Renew it or call the software maker. If you can update only manually, automatic updating might not be working. Call the software company's support line for help.

2. Accessing an Account Through an E-mail Link

No matter how official an e-mail message looks, trying to access a financial account by clicking on embedded Web links is risky. If the e-mail message is fraudulent, a cybercriminal could use the account number and password you enter to steal your identity or empty your bank account.

What you can do: If an e-mail message asks you to update your password, account number, or other information, don't take the bait. Access an online account only by using your existing browser bookmark or typing in the institution's Web address. If you suspect that an e-mail is a phishing attempt, forward it to spam@uce.gov and reportphishing@antiphishing.org.

3. Using a Single Password for All Online Accounts

Nine percent of home Internet users who responded to our State of the Net survey said they used a single password for all their accounts. That practice lets someone who gets your password and steals your identity easily access all your accounts.
What you can do: Using different passwords need not be burdensome. Do what 15 percent of the respondents to our survey do: Use variations on one password. A well-crafted password uses a combination of at least eight letters, numbers, or punctuation symbols. For convenience, you can use a fingerprint reader to store passwords for sites you go to often.

4. Downloading Free Software

You couldn't resist that neat, free utility. Or your teenager couldn't resist those fish-tank screen savers and smiley faces. Now your computer runs more slowly than ever. That's because spyware was probably packaged with the freebies.
What you can do: Download freeware only from reputable sites such as SnapFiles.com and Download.com. Tell your kids that free software is often anything but. Eliminate most spyware by downloading the free Microsoft Windows Defender and scanning your PC. If you use Windows Vista, there should already be a copy of Defender on your computer.

5. Thinking Your Mac Shields You From All Risks

According to this year's State of the Net survey, Mac users fall prey to phishing scams at about the same rate as Windows users, yet far fewer of them protect themselves with an anti-phishing toolbar. To make matters worse, the browser of choice for most Mac users, Apple's Safari, has no phishing protection. We think it should.

What you can do: Until Apple beefs up Safari, use a browser with phishing protection, such as the latest version of Firefox or Opera. Also try a free anti-phishing toolbar such as McAfee Site Advisor or FirePhish.

6. Clicking on a Pop-up Ad That Says Your PC Is Insecure

Fifteen percent of respondents to our survey who saw pop-up ads clicked on them. But that's never a good idea. Even if you know such pop-ups are phonies, they're still dangerous. It's easy to click inside the ad by mistake and be transferred to a spyware site or, worse, have malware automatically downloaded onto your computer. Our survey showed that 13 percent of respondents who saw such a pop-up tried to close it but launched it instead; 3 percent clicked on a pop-up and got a malware infection.

What you can do: When closing a pop-up, carefully click on the X on the upper left or right corner, not within the window. To avoid pop-ups altogether, enable your browser's pop-up blocker or use a free add-on blocker such as Google Toolbar.

7. Shopping Online the Same Way You Do in Stores

Online shopping requires special precautions because the risks are different than in a walk-in store: You can't always be sure who you're doing business with. You must disclose more personal information, such as your address, to the online retailer. Thieves can sneak in undetected between you and the retail site.

What you can do: Use a separate credit card just for your Internet shopping, as did 7percent of respondents to our survey. Don't use a debit card. Sites that display "https" before their address when you're entering sensitive information and those displaying certification symbols from TRUSTe and other organizations are usually safe, but there are no guarantees. When in doubt, get a virtual account number from your credit-card company. It's good for only one purchase from a specific vendor.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

More About the Bachman Murder

Beijing, a family torn asunder

By Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports

BEIJING – A knife-wielding man. An unprovoked attack. A husband dead and his wife in critical condition. Their daughter, a former U.S. Olympian, at the scene of the crime where the assailant jumps 130 feet to his death and everyone is left to wonder.

Why?

The question remains unanswered in part because details of the attack remain scarce. But a portrait of the victims that has emerged after a series of interviews helps explain why a deep, personal grief has swept across pockets of the United States and rocked the tight-knit world of volleyball.

“It’s like losing part of your family,” said Nancy Metcalf, a member of the 2004 U.S. women’s volleyball team.

Their names are Todd and Barbara Bachman. Their daughter Elisabeth played for the 2004 U.S. Olympic team, and their son-in-law, Hugh McCutcheon, is the head coach of the U.S. men’s volleyball team. Their story begins when UCLA’s volleyball coaches arrived in 1995 at the Bachman home in suburban Minneapolis hoping to sign Elisabeth, then one the nation’s most coveted recruits.

The front door swung open, and so did the Bachmans’ arms. They greeted UCLA’s coaches with an embrace and took them on a tour of a home lined with family photos.

“They immediately made you feel so at ease, as it if was your home too,” said Andy Banachowski, UCLA’s head coach.

Recalled UCLA assistant coach Kim Jagd, “We were selling the Bachmans on UCLA, but they truly wanted to get to know us.”

The Bruins landed their prized recruit, and the folks in Minnesota could have told the coaches what they were getting. Elisabeth started playing volleyball as a seventh-grader and her parents turned the house into a gathering spot for the teams and chaperoned them on trips.

The Bruins weren’t getting just a star player; they were getting an entire family.

Todd and Barbara Bachman showed up to UCLA’s games – virtually every one, home and away – and entrusted their large-scale Minneapolis-based floral business to other family members. At the volleyball team’s potluck dinners, they brought a special homemade confection.

“Bachman bars,” the Bruins called them, and they became as much a fixture of the program as the couple from Minneapolis.

“You knew 30, 40 minutes before the game they would be there, smiling and cheering,” said Michelle Quon, one of Elisabeth’s former teammates at UCLA.

Their disposition manifested itself when their daughter, who goes by the nickname “Wiz,” took the court.

UCLA’s coaches watched with amusement as Elisabeth soared above the net time and again, driving spikes at her opponents.

“The first thing she would do is apologize to the player for hitting somebody,” Banachowski said. “And it wasn’t sarcastic. It was a genuine remark, a reflection of Wiz’s parents.”

During every visit to the campus, they greeted the coaches and players with hugs and a fresh batch of those homemade treats. When Elisabeth graduated from UCLA in 2000, the family handed out the recipe, and the Bachman bars spread.

Elisabeth made the U.S. national team. She was part of a squad that ascended to No. 1in the world and arrived at the 2004 games expected to win the gold. Instead, they won only three of six matches. But even after defeats, two grinning fans were waiting for them.

“Go get ‘em next time, girls,” the Bachmans would say.

Around the holidays, the family’s countless fans received Christmas cards bearing a picture of Todd and Barbara squeezed around their daughter during the Opening Ceremony, expectations and medals be damned.

“They had just as much fun watching Wiz play volleyball as Wiz had playing volleyball,” said Amy Hughes, who handled publicity for the UCLA teams on which Elisabeth starred.

Six years after Elisabeth graduated from UCLA, the Bruins arrived in Minneapolis for two games and Todd and Barb Bachman were in the crowd and cheering as if their daughter were still on the team. Her career ended when she retired shortly before marrying McCutcheon in 2007, and the Bachmans adopted his team as if were part of their family.

A week ago Elisabeth spoke to Metcalf, who has known the Bachmans since she first played with Elisabeth in 1999 on a U.S. national junior team. During the conversation, Elisabeth mentioned she was particularly excited about going to Beijing to watch her husband’s team compete because her parents would be joining her.

Their two other daughters live on either side of the Bachmans’ house, while volleyball has taken McCutcheon and Elisabeth to Southern California.

“She was so happy that her parents were going to be there and she was going to get to spend some time with them,” Metcalf said.

So on Friday they traveled together to the Drum Tower, a popular tourist attraction in Beijing. Then came the knife-wielding man, the unprovoked attack and as soon as officials announced that Todd Bachman, 62, was dead and his wife, Barbara, had undergone surgery and was in critical care, the frantic calls and questions began.

Of all people, why the Bachmans?

Hughes, who grew close to the family at UCLA, wrestled with her emotions. Like others, she found herself thinking of the bitter tragedy and sweet memories.

“I want to stop everything right now and find the recipe for the Bachman bars,” she said.


Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

A Bachman Is the Murder Victim

Bachman's CEO killed, wife injured in Beijing attack

By Minneapolis Star Tribune Staff and wire reports

August 9, 2008

A Minnesota business executive was killed and his wife critically wounded in a knife attack at a popular tourist site in downtown Beijing Saturday afternoon.

Todd Bachman, 62, the CEO of Bachman's garden centers, died and Barbara Bachman, also 62, was hospitalized in the intensive care unit at Peking Union Medical College Hospital with life-threatening injuries, after an apparently deranged man attacked them and their Chinese guide, who was also wounded.

The attacker then jumped to his death from the second story of the Drum Tower, an ancient structure in the heart of Beijing which was used to tell time in the Imperial era.

The Bachmans, of Farmington, were in China for the Olympics and were visiting the drum tower with their daughter, Elisabeth, a former Olympic volleyball player who is married to current U.S. Men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon.

The dramatic killing cast a shadow over the first full day of Olympic competition. The attack occurred despite an overwhelming security presence in the city, and marred the Chinese government's efforts to showcase the country as open and welcoming to foreigners.

Company officials scheduled a 4 p.m. press conference at Bachman's headquarters on S. Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis.

Todd Bachman was the fourth-generation family member to head the 123-year-old business, and has worked at the company since 1968. He and his cousins in senior management oversee the company's 1,300 employees at 29 locations throughout the Twin Cities area. The company, a Twin Cities institution, began in 1885 as a vegetable farm in south Minneapolis and now includes full-service floral, gift and garden and landscape centers.

Bachman's also supplies poinsettias for the White House Christmas display each December, tradition began in 1984 when the company donated a display to the White House. Then-first lady Nancy Reagan enjoyed the arrangement so much that the annual deliveries became a mainstay.

Volleyball team in shock

The women's team was told of the attack around 5 p.m. Saturday at a team meeting, just five hours before its opening game against Japan. Many of the players who knew Bachman from previous national teams broke into tears.

"They were the sweetest family ever," the delegation member said. "They are a really Christian family. There's not one person who has ever met them who has a negative thing to say about them. They're a great family."

"They follow USA volleyball," the person with the team said. "They would leave little messages for the players. The whole reason they were here is because their life is USA volleyball."

Chinese officials did not speculate on the reasons behind the attack, which occurred around 12:20 p.m. in an area teeming with tourists.

Shopkeepers and others in the area who might have witnessed the attack declined comment, though one woman said "there was a lot of blood," which police quickly cleaned up.

Beijing officials identified the attacker as Tang Yongming, a 47-year-old man from the eastern city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, citing an identification card found on his body.

Clark Randt, the U.S. ambassador to China, visited Bachman in intensive care, but declined to comment on the attack. A source said she had undergone surgery.

President Bush, who is in Beijing to attend the Olympic Games, was informed of the attack, the White House said. "Laura and I were ...saddened by the attack on an American family and their Chinese tour guide today in Beijing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

"And the United States government has offered to provide any assistance the family needs," Bush said in a statement tonight to reporters traveling with him.

A safe city

Although Beijing is a city of 17 million, its streets are generally safe and few residents fear walking alone even in the middle of the night. It is illegal for private Chinese citizens to own guns.

Still, there are regular reports of violent incidents throughout the country by people who lash out in frustration over government corruption or injustice. For example, a man who was angry over a rough police interrogation in Shanghai recently walked into the station and stabbed and killed six police officers and wounded four others.

Attacks against tourists are rare, but the U.S. embassy has warned they are on the rise. A reporter for New Zealand television covering the Games was returning to his hotel room Friday night when he was attacked and slightly injured by a young man wielding a broken chair, Kyodo News reported.

Last March, a Chinese man with a bomb strapped to his body took 10 Australians hostage on a bus in the tourist city of Xi'an. Police shot and killed him. No tourists were harmed.

Saturday's attack rattled Chinese officials, who had made safety the No. 1 priority of hosting the Games. Chinese President Hu Jintao has said on several occasions that a secure Olympics is essential for the state's image.

The government has deployed more than 100,000 police, soldiers and others around the capital and has instituted bag checks at all subway and train stations, as well as at many high-traffic tourist points around the city.

A manager of a local tour company said officials at the Drum Tower had not required visitors to go through a security check. The manager, Liu Jin of San Hai Travel Co., said she was unsure when the Drum Tower would reopen to tourists and whether security checks would be in place.

A couple hours after the attack, it was hard to imagine anything had happened at the Drum Tower, an imposing example of imperial Chinese architecture. The gates were closed and nearby residents said pools of blood had been cleaned up efficiently by an army of police and others.

Per Jorgensen, 62, who was in Beijing for a business conference and decided to stay a few extra days to see the Olympics, said he still felt secure after hearing about the attack. "I feel sorry for what happened, but not scared. At least not yet," he said.

"My assumption is that it is a mental health issue, an individual issue," said Claire Cuddy, 60, who works in the education department of the Smithsonian Institution. "I hope it is an anomaly."

Horst Sayler, a physiotherapist for Swaziland's Olympic team, said, "There must have been a reason. Wherever you are in the world these things can happen."

Sayler's guide, an Olympic volunteer named Liu Xujun, said she and other volunteers would be vigilant about watching over their charges. "My job is to help keep him safe," she said, turning to Sayler.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Death at the Olympics

American Tourist Killed In Beijing

BEIJING (CBS) ― A knife-wielding Chinese man attacked two relatives of a coach for the U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team at a tourist site in Beijing, killing one and injuring the other on the first day of the Olympics, team officials and state media said.

The man then committed suicide by throwing himself from the second story of the site, the 13th century Drum Tower just 5 miles the main Olympics site.

The brutal attack shortly after midday was all the more shocking because of the rarity of violent crime in tightly controlled China, which has ramped up security measures even more for the Olympics.

The stabbing came only hours after what by many accounts was the most spectacular opening ceremony in Olympic history and has already dampened some of the enthusiasm.

"They are deeply saddened and shocked," Darryl Seibel, a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, said of the volleyball team.

President Bush, who is in Beijing for the Games, has been informed "and his heart goes out to the families of the victims," a White House official told CBS News. The White House said the administration and the U.S. Embassy have offered the families of the victims any assistance they need.

The U.S. Olympic Committee said in a statement that two family members of a coach for the men's indoor volleyball team were stabbed at the Drum Tower "during an attack by what local law enforcement authorities have indicated was a lone assailant."

One of the family members was killed and the other was seriously injured, it said. It did not identify the coach or give other details.

The official Xinhua News Agency identified the attacker as Tang Yongming, 47, from the eastern city of Hangzhou. It said Tang attacked the two Americans and their Chinese tour guide, who was also injured, at 12:20 p.m. on the second level of the ancient tower, then leapt to his death immediately afterward. The second level of the tower is about 130 feet high.

Seibel said the two Americans "were not wearing apparel or anything that would have specifically identified them as being members of our delegation" or as Americans.

He told The Associated Press it was "too early to say" whether the U.S. delegation or athletes will require additional security.

Some athletes were already thinking about it.

Jennie Finch, a member of the U.S. softball team, said her heart skipped a beat when she heard about the attack, but was undaunted.

"I'm here with my husband and son, so it's not easy but we're living our dreams and we're not going to live in fear," she said. "We're going to go out there every day and enjoy every day and celebrate it."

U.S. Embassy officials said they were in contact with relatives of the victims who are in Beijing. "Out of respect for the families involved, we can't say more than that," embassy spokesman Don Q. Washington told reporters.

At the scene, police blocked off streets leading to the Drum Tower and cordoned off the area with yellow police tape. Officers collected samples from the tower and the street below.

The exact details of the attack, including the weapon used, were not clear.

"There was a fight here, don't ask me any more questions," an old woman who would only give her surname, Wang, said near the site.

Attacks on foreigners in China are extremely rare. A Canadian model was murdered last month in Shanghai, but police said that was because she stumbled onto a burglary.

In March, a screaming, bomb-strapped hostage-taker who commandeered a bus with 10 Australians aboard in the popular tourist city of Xi'an was shot to death by a police sniper.

Shanghai and Beijing are still safer than most foreign cities of their size. Punishments for crimes against foreigners are heavier than for crimes against Chinese, and police-linked neighborhood watch groups are highly vigilant. Chinese are not allowed to own guns.

Even so, the U.S. government now warns Americans against muggings, beatings and even carjackings, especially in the nightlife and shopping districts of large cities.

Built in the 13th century, the Drum Tower is one of few ancient structures still in fast-developing Beijing. Drummers pounded their massive instruments on the hour to let people in the imperial city know the time. It is located on an important central axis of the city, to the north of the Forbidden City, the former home of the emperor.

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said it was "deeply saddened" by the attack and was working with Chinese authorities to provide whatever assistance it could.

(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Friday, August 08, 2008

Vice President Pawlenty?

Except for the lead, this is an interesting and informative story from the New York Times.
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August 8, 2008

Pawlenty Looks to National Stage

By MONICA DAVEY

ST. PAUL — As is his way, Gov. Tim Pawlenty made a self-deprecating aside on a local radio show this spring during the ceremonial start of the state’s beloved fishing season. He praised his wife’s willingness to fish with him and to watch hockey games, then added, “And I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.’”

Some Minnesotans cringed. Others, including his wife, Mary, a former judge who met her future husband in law school, said he was just being himself, joker and all.

Outside his home state, Mr. Pawlenty is among the least-known of the prospects Senator John McCain is said to be considering as a vice-presidential partner. But those who have followed his political rise here say Mr. Pawlenty’s personal story — his direct, everyman appeal to ordinary people — is among his most powerful attributes.

Long before the polls began suggesting that Republicans could face trouble in November, Mr. Pawlenty, now in his second term, was urging his party to become “the party of Sam’s Club,” not just the country club.

“We need everybody — to grow the party and to move forward,” Mr. Pawlenty explained in a recent interview. “One of the most powerful reasons people go to Sam’s Club or Target or Costco is they want value, and Republicans are well suited to be the party that says, ‘We’re going to have a limited but also effective government.’”

Mr. Pawlenty can talk about such things from experience. He now lives in the well-off suburb of Eagan, but holds blue-collar credentials. He grew up in South St. Paul, then a working-class town where life revolved around the stockyards, where his father drove a truck, where he played hockey, where his mother died of cancer when he was still a teenager, and where he went on to become the first in his family to graduate from college.

For Mr. McCain, whose campaign would not comment about the vice-presidential selection process, Mr. Pawlenty might be appealing on other fronts. At 47, tall and runner-thin, Mr. Pawlenty is the same age as Senator Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. He also carries qualifications important to many conservatives: opposition to tax increases, longtime attendance at a church with a pastor who leads the National Association of Evangelicals and a mostly consistent conservatism on social issues.

If anything, Mr. Pawlenty’s critics say, he is too prepared for this moment; they say he has been so conscious of the possibility of higher office that he has been overly careful as governor. This year, he vetoed 34 bills passed by a Democratic-dominated Legislature, more than any other Minnesota governor had vetoed in a year since at least World War II, leading his most fervent critics to describe him as more of a goalie fending off pucks than a leader rushing the net.

Some critics even note changes in his haircut — once a mullet-style, now a cropped conservative look less common at a Minnesota hockey rink — as evidence of his political calculations.

“He’s done popular stuff, easy stuff, symbolic stuff,” said Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman who lost the governor’s race to Mr. Pawlenty in 2002 as the Independence Party candidate and who says he supports Mr. McCain for president. “I can’t think of a single issue in which he has been leading public opinion. What you find here is an unremarkable record.”

Mr. Pawlenty’s supporters strongly disagree, and point to a list of accomplishments: holding the line on taxes while resolving a $4.5 billion deficit in his first term, changing the state’s education system, including creating performance pay for teachers, and pressing environmental efforts, less common in his party, on conservation and renewable energy.

“Is he ambitious? Yes,” said Charlie Weaver, once Mr. Pawlenty’s chief of staff. “Does that ambition cloud his judgment and cause him to do things not within his values? No.”

In a way, Mr. Pawlenty was an accidental governor.

In 2001, he was considering a run for the United States Senate, having served as the State House majority leader, a City Council member in Eagan and a member of the city’s planning commission. Republican leaders in Washington, though, suspected that Norm Coleman would be a stronger candidate and urged Mr. Pawlenty to back off.

Mr. Pawlenty ran for governor instead, although some allies, including former Senator David F. Durenberger, for whom Mr. Pawlenty once worked, say they believe he would have been more comfortable in the Senate, given his experience as a lawmaker.

In the summer of 1980, Mr. Pawlenty — who had gone to the University of Minnesota planning to be a dentist — went to work for Mr. Durenberger, having learned about the internship in a campus newspaper. He returned for six months during Mr. Durenberger’s 1982 campaign, and again, for a year, as the campaign’s political director in 1988.

In 1990, Mr. Durenberger was denounced in the Senate for misconduct involving financial dealings. Bob Schroeder, a spokesman for Mr. Pawlenty, said that Mr. Pawlenty was disappointed with Mr. Durenberger’s troubles, but that those events “occurred years after the governor and senator were in regular contact.”

The two men still talk from time to time, said Mr. Durenberger, whom Mr. Pawlenty appointed three years ago as chairman of a committee on health care policy.

While he was working for Mr. Durenberger, Mr. Pawlenty met Mr. McCain when the senator came to Minnesota, as Mr. Pawlenty recalls it, for a veterans’ program and Mr. Pawlenty (and his wife) volunteered to drive him around. They got to know each other over the better part of two days, Mr. Pawlenty said. They stayed in touch over the years, and Mr. Pawlenty was an early, vocal supporter of Mr. McCain’s presidential bid, even last year when some considered it doomed.

Mr. Pawlenty is high on the short list of candidates Mr. McCain is considering for vice president, according to Republicans familiar with the deliberations. Mr. Pawlenty has campaigned with Mr. McCain and for him, but following the rules set out for potential vice-presidential nominees by Mr. McCain, he has declined to comment on what is going on.

Asked at a press luncheon in Washington what the most important quality of a running mate would be, Mr. Pawlenty responded, “Discretion,” and walked away from the microphone.

In his own races for governor, in 2002 and 2006, Mr. Pawlenty won with pluralities, not majorities, the most recent being ever so narrow: 47 percent to 46 percent.

Nonetheless, Mr. Pawlenty’s advocates consider the results to be remarkable shows of strength, considering the races had third-party candidates in a state with a tradition of strong Democrats like Hubert H. Humphrey, Eugene J. McCarthy, Walter F. Mondale and Paul Wellstone, and a tradition of electing iconoclastic governors, including Jesse Ventura and Rudy Perpich.

But those margins have led others to question Mr. Pawlenty’s popularity here, and whether his presence on the Republican ticket could even secure Minnesota, which has supported Democratic presidential candidates since 1976.

“This is not a fellow who is going to come across as strikingly charismatic,” said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College. “People see that he’s smart and competent, but there’s not much sizzle.”

Before crowds, Mr. Pawlenty seems comfortable and warm. He speaks, at times, without visible notes. He quotes from books, sports interviews and magazines, and can turn wonky, delving into energy and education policy, then veer back to regular-guy talk, as he did last week, when he told a crowd in Chicago that the health care system was “flat busted.”

The prospect of Mr. Pawlenty as Mr. McCain’s attack dog makes some here chuckle a little. Even some who have run against Mr. Pawlenty describe him as fun, winsome, slightly corny and playful, even nice. He has played baseball outside the State House during a break in a tense legislative session. He has shot a hockey puck inside his ornate reception room.

Roger Moe, the Democrat who lost to Mr. Pawlenty in 2002, remembered Mr. Pawlenty quietly leaning over near the end of a candidate forum and offering him a lift home.

“Why don’t you ride with me?” Mr. Moe recalled Mr. Pawlenty offering. “We’ve got this big plane.”

So there they were, foes in the middle of a campaign, sharing beers and gossip on the way home.

While Mr. Pawlenty wins praise from social and fiscal conservatives, several episodes in his past — and his recent talk of renewable energy standards — have left some wondering whether he is truly one of them.

Fifteen years ago, while in the State House, Mr. Pawlenty voted to expand rights for gay men and lesbians; he has since said he regrets the vote.

Then, as governor, after a partisan battle with the Legislature and a partial shutdown of the state government, he agreed to a “health impact fee” on cigarettes, irking fiscal conservatives who said he had broken his promise not to raise taxes.

Some also wonder whether Mr. Pawlenty’s brushes with campaign finance and disclosure questions, though rare, might create a conflict with the above-board image put forth by Mr. McCain.

In 2002, only weeks before Election Day, the state’s Republican Party and Mr. Pawlenty’s campaign were accused of illegal coordination over two television advertisements paid for by the state party. Mr. Pawlenty’s campaign paid a $100,000 fine and was required to report a $500,000 in-kind contribution from the state party.

Months after the election, Mr. Pawlenty’s political adversaries raised new questions about whether he had properly disclosed consulting work he did in 2001 and 2002 for a telecom company owned by a longtime associate. Mr. Pawlenty had received $4,500 a month for more than a year, but did not include the consulting fees in the wages section of his financial disclosure form. Instead, he cited the consulting work — and a sole proprietorship company he had created and done the work under — as an investment or a security.

Mr. Pawlenty eventually amended his disclosure forms to include the consulting payments in both sections of the form, and the state’s campaign finance board ultimately found no wrongdoing in the matter.

“He said he was sorry,” said Mr. Moe, Mr. Pawlenty’s Democratic opponent that year. “He always says ‘sorry.’ ”

A year ago, Mr. Pawlenty faced the most visible crisis of his tenure. On a busy Wednesday evening, the Interstate 35W bridge through downtown Minneapolis collapsed, plunging cars into the Mississippi River and killing 13 people.

Many praised Mr. Pawlenty for his swift, empathetic response. The political battle that followed — in what, by 2007, was a Democratic-dominated State House and Senate — was far more complicated.

Democrats raged about the state’s aging bridges and roads, and blamed Mr. Pawlenty for vetoing a gasoline tax increase and for putting Carol Molnau, the lieutenant governor, in charge of the state’s Transportation Department.

After months of argument, the Legislature this year passed a transportation package that included a gasoline tax increase. Mr. Pawlenty vetoed it, but was overridden for the first time.

Mr. Pawlenty vetoed the package because it contained $6.6 billion in tax increases and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional local sales taxes, aides said. But Lawrence J. Pogemiller, the Senate majority leader, said Mr. Pawlenty had waffled over the gasoline tax increase. Mr. Pogemiller said Mr. Pawlenty had called him for a meeting two days after the bridge collapse and had said he would support a gas tax increase, only to withdraw that support three days later under criticism from conservatives. The governor’s aides dispute that account.

“Look,” Mr. Pogemiller said, “to me, this is verification that he does and says whatever is necessary to look good at the moment.”

Mrs. Pawlenty dismissed claims that her husband’s ambitions had driven policy choices. “That’s not who he is,” she said.

Nor, for that matter, she added, has Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential search driven her husband’s hairstyle. The governor has cut and grown out his hair at various times over the years, she said.